The Cold Song (31 page)

“And that’s exactly why,” Jon said, “we mustn’t start pestering Alma with all sorts of questions. Bringing up the past. Asking what she might or might not have seen more than two years ago when she was out driving with her grandmother.”

“I don’t know,” Siri said. “I don’t know if she was raving.”

“She could have been talking about anything,” Jon said. “You said it yourself—it was almost impossible to understand her. She had her own language at the end, you said. We gave our statements to the police at the time. Remember? So did Alma. No one had seen Milla. Do we really have to drag Alma through all this again?”

Irma had construed this last encounter between Siri and Jenny in her own way. The day after the scene in the bedroom she had called Jon to say that now Siri had crossed the line. “What line is that?” Jon asked.

Siri had shouted, according to Irma. Siri had shaken. Siri had actually been in danger of killing her own mother.

And while they were on the subject, Irma begged to remind him of the agreement between herself and Siri’s mother, which was that Irma was to care for Jenny as she
thought best
when the day came that Jenny could not care for herself
, and that day had now come, she said, and she would kindly request that Jon and Siri respect a sick woman’s last wish and stay the hell away from Mailund. Irma considered it her duty to care for Jenny for whatever time she had left, so she had in fact decided to
forbid
Siri from visiting Jenny from now on.

“You
can’t forbid
Siri to do anything,” Jon said. “You can’t! And your accusations against Siri are ridiculous. Downright spiteful. You are a very mean woman, Irma.”

“I was there, I saw what I saw,” Irma said.

“Well, no matter what, you can’t
forbid
Siri to visit her mother.”

“You just watch me!” retorted Irma and slammed down the phone.

Jenny died the next day. Irma sent Jon a text, informing him of this and asking him to pass the message on to his wife. She left it to the family to make the funeral arrangements.

And then she had written:
My work here is done
.

After the funeral, Irma had packed her suitcase, fed the ducks in the overgrown garden pond one last time, and departed, never to be seen again. Jon seemed to remember hearing someone say that she had a place in the mountains at Hemsedal, but on reflection he came to the conclusion that he must have heard wrongly or misunderstood. He checked his notes. He remembered writing it down.
Irma in the skiing mecca of Hemsedal?
Yep. That’s what he had written. Could he have dreamed it? Irma the giantess, Irma with the angel face, Irma
with the long curly hair, swishing down the ski slopes. He pressed
DELETE
just to be rid of her, wherever she was.

Christmas was celebrated quietly with the children, and the snow kept on falling. Early in the morning on Christmas Eve, Jon and Alma and Liv went off to the woods to chop down a tree. They walked through the woodland and every time Jon said, “Look, that pine there, that could be our Christmas tree,” Liv said, “No, it can’t, that’s not a proper Christmas tree.” And Jon and Alma and Liv walked on, past snow-covered glades, past the green lake, which wasn’t green but white like everything else.

And Jon scanned the ice and said, “Maybe we could go skating here someday.”

“No,” said Alma.

He turned to the girls. They were well wrapped up in jackets, hats, and mittens. Alma shook her head and clasped Liv’s hand.

Jon’s phone warbled. He groped in his jacket pocket, pulled it out, and looked at the screen.

“No,” Liv echoed.

Christmas Eve is the hardest day of the year. As you can imagine, I’m sure. A
.

Jon slipped the phone back into his pocket. He looked at Alma, he looked at Liv. They were standing in the snow, shouting at him.

“No, we won’t,” Liv said. “Papa, are you listening?”

“What won’t we?” Jon asked.

“We won’t go skating here,” Liv said, rolling her eyes. That was so typical of Papa, not to listen. Typical Papa, to be the only one who didn’t know what was so obvious to everybody else—that there could be no talk of skating on this lake.

Jon and Alma and Liv walked on. At last they came to a clearing and in this clearing was a tree, and it was here that Liv stopped and pointed.

“There,” she said. “That’s our Christmas tree.” And Alma and Jon nodded and Jon set to work and chopped down the tree while his daughters looked on.

Siri cooked up good, traditional Christmas fare: mutton ribs (dried and salted, steamed over birch twigs), mashed turnip, special Christmas sausages, and almond potatoes, and Leopold had his favorite, kidneys, but merely sniffed at his bowl, went back to the fireplace, and lay down on his old blanket. The big head between his paws. The long, scrawny body. The dull coat with the white patch on his chest. Jon felt a sudden urge to weep. He looked out the window, at the snow falling through the darkness, and remembered the summer two and a half years ago when Siri was flitting about out there in the sea of mist, drifting between the tables with all the white tablecloths swirling around her.

Christmas night was quiet. The children slept. Siri slept. And in the morning Jon woke early, got dressed in the dark, and tiptoed out of the bedroom. The broad stairway wound from the attic to the basement apartment. Not all that long ago Leopold
would have been standing at the foot of the stairs waiting for him. Now he was asleep on his blanket in the living room. Jon went over to him, bent down and stroked his head, whispered, “Hey, boy. Want to go for a walk? Come on, Leo, come on!”

Leopold opened his eyes and looked at him.

“Let’s go out,” Jon continued. “Come on. Up you get.”

Slowly, Leopold got to his feet, staggered a little, and wagged his tail, as if to assure both Jon and himself that all was well. It was still dark when Jon opened the front gate and stepped out onto the road with Leopold by his side.

Jenny’s funeral had played out pretty much according to Jenny’s instructions. She was dressed in a red silk dress and nectarine-colored sandals, with the black handbag she was so fond of on her chest.

Before the funeral, Jon had accompanied Siri when she went to meet the vicar who would be conducting the service for her mother. The vicar, whose name was Beth, said she was looking forward to learning more about
Jenny
.

He noticed how she stressed people’s names—as if she were speaking in italics—presumably to show how much she cared. And why were they all on a first-name basis? They had just met. She was a vicar, for God’s sake. Someone one goes to in a moment of seriousness and need, not a pal.

“
Siri
, hello,” said Beth, holding out her arms. Siri had flinched and Jon had had to pinch her hand to stop her from storming straight back out of there.

They took their seats on spindle-backed chairs set around a brown Formica table in the vicar’s office, Siri and Jon said yes
to coffee, poured into paper cups from a red-and-white thermos. Beth was new to the town, had spent most of her life in Trondheim, was in her mid-thirties, and had long, dark, curly hair that she pinned up with a big flower clasp. She wore a little too much lipstick and glasses with brightly colored striped frames. Siri had read an interview with her in
Aftenposten
on the day of their meeting, and after reading it, all she had really wanted to do was cancel the whole thing.

“We can’t have this vicar burying my mother,” she exclaimed.

The newspaper interview had been part of the coverage of the discovery of Milla’s body and the remanding to custody of K.B., charged with an almost indescribably heinous crime (rape and first-degree murder, the police would not comment on reports that Milla had been buried alive).

And how, the interviewer asked, did a small community deal with a tragedy of such magnitude, especially now that it was known that a perfectly ordinary young man, not a stranger, was behind the murder of Milla?

Beth the vicar had talked about evil.
It’s all around us, but if we stand together we can fight it
. She had talked about goodness. She had talked about
our times
and how they were very difficult. She had talked about an emerging new Norway and an emerging new Europe. She had talked about social media.
What’s the good of being able to communicate with the whole world if we forget to communicate with each other and with God
. She had talked about grief. She had talked about forgiveness. And she had talked about empathy. But first and foremost she had talked about herself and her own difficult role in situations like this … and how it was a burden she could not
refuse to shoulder … 
It is my duty to support this shocked and grief-stricken small community
.

She had posed for pictures in front of the church, grave-eyed behind the stripy glasses, with the same flower clasp in her hair.

And now here they were, Siri, Jon, and Beth, and Beth said, “I know, of course, that
Jenny
was an important figure in the local community, what with her running the bookshop. I’ve heard that she built up a fabulous selection of foreign literature in translation. That’s right, isn’t it?”

Siri pressed her lips together and nodded.

Beth leaned across the Formica table and smiled at Jon.

“Jon.”

Jon jumped when he heard her say his name.

“Jon
,
“
she repeated. “You’re a writer, aren’t you?”

Jon glanced at Siri, her nose and cheeks were pink.

“I am a writer,” Jon said.

“I read one of your books,” Beth said. “I thought it was
wonderful
. It was that one with the title that has something to do with hair …?… 
Your hair
?… 
My hair
?… Something to do with hair.” She smiled apologetically. “You know the one I mean, don’t you?”

“No,” Jon said, shaking his head. “I’ve never written a book with hair in the title.”

“Oh,” said Beth. “Really? Oops. Then it must be me who’s getting mixed up.”

“Maybe,” said Jon and turned to Siri. “Maybe we could talk a bit about Jenny now, and about what you’re going to say at the funeral.”

“Yes, let’s do that,” said Beth. “And I’d like it if we could talk a bit about her grandchildren. You do have children, don’t you?”

“Their names are Alma and Liv,” Siri said flatly.

“
Alma
and Liv,” Beth said and smiled. “Perhaps you could tell me a little bit about them and what their grandma meant to them? I bet there are some
wonderful
memories.”

And so, a few days later in an almost full church, Jon and Siri held each other’s hands very tightly, and tighter still during Beth’s sermon. Jon didn’t dare to look at Siri, but he could feel her fury and her grief. And her fear too. Felt it like a vibration just under her skin. When his turn came to speak he had to extricate his hand from hers. When he rose and made his way up to the altar, he was sure he could feel Siri’s eyes on him. He stood for a moment beside the coffin before stepping up to the lectern and clearing his throat.

“I found this passage in a book that I was reading,” he said, “and I thought of … well, I thought of all of us. Strindberg ought to be read in Swedish, but I tried to translate it, so here it goes.” He looked up at the mourners and then at Siri and his children sitting in the first pew. “It’s from Strindberg’s novella
Alone
,” he added, “and I’m going to begin in the middle of a sentence, I think Jenny would have liked that.”

He smiled. And then he read:

“I had, however, noted that we were not so quick to smile as before and that we observed a certain care in our speech. We had discovered the weight and the worth of the spoken word. Life had certainly not mellowed our judgment, but
wisdom had eventually taught us that all one’s words come back to one; furthermore we had come to see that men cannot be described in full tones, but that one must also use halftones in order to express as accurately as possible one’s opinion of a person.”

After the funeral, Siri invited all of the mourners to a simple repast in the old bakery, and when Jon and Siri and the children were walking back to Mailund that October evening, up the long road to the house, Jon said, “If we could hear Jenny now, what do you think she would say?”

“I think she’s saying: Who lives in this house?” said Siri, looking up at the old white mansion at the top of the road.

A few weeks later it was Milla’s turn to be buried. Siri and Jon talked about going, they really ought to, but what would they say? What good would they do there? It might even cause offense.

“It was all a mistake, right from the start,” Siri said. “The whole thing. And we should have done more.”

The day after the funeral Jon received a text.

They found her in the ground and now we’ve buried her again. She was nineteen when we lost her and you are as mute as ever. A
.

Jon and Leopold had reached the foot of the road, they had met no one. There was just him and Leopold and the road and the snow and nothing else was left in the world. But then, as it began to brighten up ever so slightly, a small figure appeared before him. It took Jon a minute to recognize it. The
figure. And then, in a flash he realized who it was and what his name was. The only thing missing was the bike.

“Hi,” said Simen.

“Hi,” said Jon. “What have you done with your bike? I hardly recognized you without it.”

Simen rolled his eyes and spread his arms.

“Yeah, well—it just goes on snowing and snowing.”

“Merry Christmas,” said Jon.

“Merry Christmas to you too,” said Simen.

“Did you get some good presents?” Jon asked.

“Yes,” said Simen.

“So what did you get?”

Simen began to walk toward the jetties and signaled with a jerk of his head for Jon and Leopold to join him.

“I don’t want to talk about what I got for Christmas,” Simen said. “That’s not important … Did you know, by the way, that it was me who found Milla a few months ago? Me and my two friends?”